Trip the light fantastic in PEM's immersive interactive art exhibit

By Chris Bergeron, Correspondent

Monday

Dec 4, 2017 at 6:01 AM

Fusing scientific reasoning with a trip through the mysteries of sensory perception, an internationally acclaimed show at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, “XYZT: A Journey in 4 Dimensions,” helps you understand how Alice felt when she tumbled down the rabbit hole.

SALEM - Instead of just looking at some paintings hanging on a wall, totally immerse yourself in a mesmerizing four-dimensional realm where imagination and creativity animate space and time in a new exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum.

Fusing scientific reasoning with a trip through the mysteries of sensory perception, this internationally acclaimed show, “XYZT: A Journey in 4 Dimensions,” helps you understand how Alice felt when she tumbled down the rabbit hole.

This interactive exhibition features 10 “virtual environments” in a darkened gallery in which letters swirl like hummingbirds in flight, digital beach sand dances around your fingertips and virtual “grass” on the floor slides around your footsteps like your personal bedroom slippers.

It was designed by France natives Adrien Mondot, a juggler and artist, and Claire Bardainne, a graphic designer, who created the exhibit based on scientific principles so each of its four-dimensional components corresponds to a point in space – horizontal (X), vertical (Y), depth (Z) and time (T).

Maybe you'd better make that five dimensions to include the sheer wonder of cutting-edge technology mixed with the art of illusion.

Saxophonist and music educator Jason Miele watched his young daughters Sophia and Gabriela laugh as their images morphed like fantastic figures in a fun house mirror.

“They love the interaction,” said Miele, who visited the exhibit with several other parents who home-school their children. “An exhibit like this helps children learn how to learn because it encourages them to think about why things are happening.”

Following two grandchildren who scampered ahead through cascades of airborne letters, Martha Ann Belair said, “I feel like I’m getting a tour of Wonderland by Stephen Hawking.”

The exhibit remains on view through April 22, 2018.

Janey Winchell, who directs the PEM’s Art & Nature Center where the exhibit is being held, said the museum is committed to "doing things that aren’t expected” and wanted to host “XYZT” to provide new kinds of experiences for visitors.

She explained each installation is accompanied by a video kiosk with narrated animation that explains the underlying principles of mathematics or physics governing the created environment. And each kiosk, she said, features a clip from a related stage performance by the Adrien M & Claire B Company that shows the technique in action.

Through simple movements, visitors can alter their virtual landscapes, figuratively touch complex algorithms or dance in a waterfall of light.

“The 10 vibrant and fleeting virtual environments in ‘XYZT’ bring together performative, visual and digital art in an original way,” said Winchell. “The artists’ goal is to turn digital images into living partners for people to play with and contemplate.”

Unlike many museum shows in which visitors merely look at object on walls or shelves, Mondot and Bardainne have fashioned an interactive event in which guests’ movements trigger funny, unpredictable and thought-inspiring changes, each representing a scientific principle in the immersive environments.

“XYZT” represents the best of the next wave of museum exhibits that invite visitors to become part of the experience rather than just passive observers.

Think of running, arms waving, into a flock of nesting birds or dropping food into a pond of koi fish.

Winchell said visitors become active participants by transforming each environment and then thinking about the science behind the changes.

“The visitor is bringing the art into being,” she said. “The human being is the conduit that brings together the virtual and the real.”

Nearby, Rachel Simms, of Chelmsford, and her 9-year-old daughter Megan sent shards of white light flying like confetti on a screen at a station called “Shifting Clouds” that demonstrated a “Probabilistic social model of movement.”

“Guests of all ages complete the artworks by walking, dancing, or blowing in this immersive environment,” said Winchell. “Experiences such as crossing a river, touching sand or walking through grass are transposed into abstract dreamlike encounters with lines, dots and letters.”

Attending with classmates from Pentucket Regional High School in West Newbury, student Jacob Daniels said the “visual magic” of “XYZT” had inspired him to create a graphic novel he plans to draw about a futuristic city populated by thinking plants.